


Winchester/Wayward Christmas Card 2017

by lizbobjones



Category: Supernatural, Wayward Sisters - Fandom
Genre: Christmas Fluff, F/F, F/M, Fluff without Plot, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-24
Updated: 2017-12-24
Packaged: 2019-02-19 16:46:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 18
Words: 18,422
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13127613
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lizbobjones/pseuds/lizbobjones
Summary: This year, the Winchesters go to Jody's for Christmas.





	1. Chapter 1

“So, the rule is _we_ saved _your_ asses this year, so you come to ours, Winchester.”

“Fair enough,” Sam laughs, walking into the library.

“What is?” Dean asks, looking up sharply from his laptop, eyes already narrowing in suspicion about why Sam sounds so happy.

“Christmas arrangements,” Sam says. “Uh – here, lemme put you on speaker phone.”

“You’re making me break the news?” Jody’s voice echoes out of the phone, slightly distorted by the little speaker but still clearly disapproving, as Sam places it on the table.

“Hi Jody. I’m listening,” Dean says.

“My place, everyone at the table, bring the whole family. We’re celebrating this properly.”

“Are you sure?” Dean asks. “We have room for you all here if you want –”

“Want to spend Christmas in an underground Bunker in the middle of nowhere? We’re good here, Dean. It’ll be fun, we can unwind. Catch a break. The weather’s supposed to be cold and clear so the roads will be good. You can’t wiggle your way out of this.”

“She’s right,” comes a voice from the door. Mary leaning on the frame, arms folded, eyebrow raised in full Mom mode. “This place is gloomy and we don’t even have a tree up.”

“How do we get a tree down the stairs?” Dean asks.

“We can get it through the garage, we just have to –”

Sam has lived this exact argument six times and they are far past the point where he would have won any money in the bet he’d twisted Cas into over it, so he cuts his losses and speaks over them, “We’d love to be there Jody. We’ll see you soon.”

“Sure thing.”

He hangs up on her as Dean and Mary both stop and turn to look at him.

“By the way,” he says, “If you want to get anything large down here, I think you could just ask Jack to do it.”

Mary unfolds and folds her arms, and Dean’s mouth drops open. “I got so used to Cas being pissy about being asked to do anything, I forgot you can ask that kid to do anything without getting complaints!”

Sam laughs to himself. Worth it and the twenty dollars he owes Cas for daring to have some optimism about his family’s intelligence.

Dean shuts his laptop and scrapes back his chair. “I’m gonna go tell Cas we have Christmas sorted then, I guess.” He’s definitely struggling not to smile too much as he hurries out of the room.

Mary sits down at the table, still watching Dean over her shoulder until he has passed through the war room and out of sight. “Are he and Cas still…” She stops, and pulls an uncertain face.

“Yeah, I have no idea either, mom.”

“Do you think they’ll get over it any time soon or are we going to be stuck in a car with that all the way to Sioux Falls?”

“What?”

“Their fight? I don’t even know what it’s about.”

“Uh. When – wh… Uh, yeah, their… I-I don’t think they do either.”

“Is there something we can do to help?”

Sam looks helplessly around the library for a distraction. “We – um, they – it’s…”

His phone beeps with times and orders about what to bring from Jody relayed by text and he snatches it up, thanking her with all his heart for the distraction.


	2. Chapter 2

“I, uh, made hot chocolate.”

Claire glances up from the huge book on monsters she has spread across her knees, and catches Alex looking up from her textbook at the exact same time. They’re sitting in the living room, feet stretched onto the same footstool, Claire in the armchair, Alex on the sofa, and they haven’t exchanged a word in possibly an hour.

Patience is creeping into the room like she’s still nervous of disturbing them, but she puts two large mugs on the table in the gaps between monster lore and medical diagrams, careful to nudge the books aside. She carefully turns the handles towards them, perpetually mindful of things that could cause little accidents.

It makes Claire laugh though - she has permanent dibs on one of the rudest mugs in Jody’s collection, the white one with “ _UNT_ ” written beside the handle, which is also in the colour of the typeface. It still cracks her up every time, and makes Donna pull incredible faces every time she sees Claire sipping out of it. Alex has no preference whatsoever to the mugs but always seems to end up with the pink flowery ones when the whole group sits down to war councils and coffee, and Patience has clearly started to think Alex likes them because Claire’s been watching this drama low-key build for the past few months. Alex’s jaw tenses but she doesn’t say anything.

Patience stands awkwardly beside them, hands retreating back into the pocket of her hoodie. “Do you know where Kaia is? I made one for her too.”

“No,” Claire says, closing her book. “I’ll go find her for you.”

“You don’t have to, you look comfortable…”

“She was snoring,” Alex puts in.

“I was not. And it’s not a problem. I know the sorts of places she goes.”

“I’m just saying, I could probably…” Patience vaguely makes wiggly fingers around her forehead, gesturing her third eye.

It’s the first time she’s joked about it, like, _ever_. Claire wasn’t sure she could even make jokes until right this second. So she dutifully laughs, and gets up. “Chill out for a mo, enjoy the peace and quiet while it lasts.”

A grimace leaps onto Patience’s face before she can control it.

“C’mon, they’re not that bad,” Claire says. “I can’t believe I’m defending them, but they’re actually kinda fun. And they’re gonna bring their mom, and Cas, and I get to meet Jack…”

“And it’s going to be _super_ weird,” Alex says. Claire glares at her. “What? You were thinking it?”

“Are you psychic too now?”

“I know you,” she says simply.

Claire huffs and picks up her hot chocolate. “I’m gonna go find Kaia.”

She heads to the kitchen first, where sure enough another mug is waiting on the counter, in the thick blue hand-made mug Kaia favours. She scoops it up and heads outside, still wearing her fuzzy indoor boots.

Kaia is sitting at the end of the garden, against one of the apple trees that grow wild and untended at the back of the land. Her face is buried in the enormous yellow scarf that Donna had given her, and Claire wonders if she’s asleep or awake. Her eyes don’t open when Claire crouches down beside her, but she looks tense.

“How are you not freezing?” Claire asks.

“I’m used to being cold,” Kaia mutters, finally lifting her head. Claire immediately shoves the steaming mug in her face, hoping it will fix everything.

“Patience made us all hot chocolate. I’m guessing you’re not going to come sit inside?”

“I’m good out here.”

Claire slumps back against the tree to sit with Kaia. The ground is rock hard and immediately begins to hungrily take her body heat away through her jeans. They sit in silence for a while, cradling their drinks. Claire usually finds it easier to talk to Kaia than anyone else in the house, except perhaps Donna, but this feels like something’s wrong beyond easy words and she doesn’t want to mess it up. Kaia doesn’t seem to be interested in talking, so Claire waits for a few minutes, piecing sentence fragments together, before she takes a nervous stab at helping.

“It was ages before I felt like I fit in here, you know. I mean, it wasn’t until you –” she stops herself anyway, belatedly realising how corny it would sound to tell Kaia that she’d made the difference about if Claire stayed or went. That she’d probably leave if Kaia did, and follow her anywhere.

“It’s not that,” Kaia says. “I’m happy here. I just… When Jody told us they’re coming for the holiday… I don’t even do Christmas, and… You know. I’m glad we saved them, that Dean isn’t… He apologised. But.”

“Yeah… I know.”

“Do you?”

Claire snorts. “You know how I met Dean Winchester again as an adult? He was all hopped up on this magic… darkness or something. No one explained it to me because they thought I was a dumb kid but I heard them talking to each other about it sometimes, when they thought I wasn’t listening. But he flipped… Killed a whole bunch of people, including the man who’d been like a father to me since I ran away.”

Kaia looks at her with open horror. “What the fuck? Really?”

“Yeah. It was messed up. And then I think in hindsight I nearly got abducted by white slavery traffickers or something but they took me to their shady trailer in the woods and offered to kill him for me to butter me up.” Kaia’s still staring at her. “I _said_ it was messed up. I was like, seventeen and everyone I got close to ran away or died. I’m not competing, just…”

“Yeah. I get it. So you think he’s not that bad?”

Claire shrugs. “He’s hard to get along with, like, _massive_ understatement, but he’s kinda fun and goofy when he’s not… You know, in a terrifying murder-rampage mode. Which seems to happen waaa-hey too often. I’m not saying be best friends with him, but, and I feel super weird saying this, maybe give him a second chance. I did. Jody trusts him, or she wouldn’t invite him for Christmas. She’s known him for nine years, and she says he’s saved a lot of people, a lot more than he’s hurt.”

“Guess we’re all messed up, huh?”

“Seems to be the way.”

“Unless you’re Patience, of course.”

“Well, yeah. She wore an angora sweater to go hunt ghouls. Who _does_ that?”

They share a laugh about that, and it feels easier to drink more cocoa in silence. It feels uncomfortable to still rag on Patience – she _is_ trying. She uses the “You don’t have to be crazy to work here, but it helps!!” mug. But it makes Kaia smile, and… Claire still isn’t over that Patience organises her sock drawer. They’re lucky if anything even passes through the drawers instead of the various piles of laundry around their room.

“If it gets bad, we could always find a case to take your mind off things,” Claire says.

“You really don’t stop, do you?” Kaia smiles at her.

“It’s been a _week_ ,” Claire complains.


	3. Chapter 3

“When was the last time we took a week off?” Dean shouts over the music that he had only just turned up too loud. There’s a high to loading up on coffee and hitting the open road, for him. He forgot how much _better_ it is when they don’t have work waiting for them at the other end.

“We have them all the time,” Sam grumbles, wedged up against the door in the back seat, Cas taking up way too much of the middle of the bench and not yielding to the back and forth sway of the car. Jack is pressed up against the window in the less literal sense, hand on the glass, watching the flat plains roll by with fascination that Dean doesn’t think Nebraska deserves.

“Yeah, we get slow weeks when we’re not catching a break or finding any cases to do, but I’m talking, shelve the responsibilities, take a trip, kick back when we get there… Have some fun…”

“You had fun on that ghoul case,” Cas says, as if this completely settles that fun has been accomplished and never needs to be worried about again.

“Come on, that was work that just happened not to suck for about half an hour, not taking time off. We’re booked into the swankiest motel in Sioux Falls, which is way too new to be haunted, and way too boring to be hosting demons or witches or whatever.”

“It’s not exactly what I’d call ‘swanky’ based on its Yelp reviews,” Mary says.

“Since when do you check Yelp reviews?” Sam asks.

“Is there _anyone_ who isn’t a total killjoy about this?” Dean demands.

“I’m really excited for this experience,” Jack pipes up.

“Of course. Baby’s first Christmas. We should make you a scrapbook.”

“What for? Will I need it?”

“No – what?”

“He was being sarcastic,” Cas explains patiently to Jack.

“Hey, don’t get me wrong, I’m thrilled to have someone on the team who’s never heard all the jokes inside a Christmas cracker.”

“Jack,” Mary says. “I want you to know that I owe you my life. Just say the word, any time, and I’ll be there for you. Especially if Dean corners you with Christmas cracker jokes.”

“Are they that bad?”

“Christmas crackers were brand new just before I was dead for thirty years and I got the same one two Christmasses running.”

Cas leans forward to fold his arms on the back of the seat and carefully says, “I got the same one as I did two thousand years ago.”

Dean inadvertently swings the car into the thankfully empty wrong lane as he twists to look at him. “Is that a joke!?”

Mary grabs the wheel and heaves it around. “Eyes front or so help me, I’m driving!”

Sam shifts uncomfortably as Cas settles back into taking up the entire back seat somehow. He’s all elbows. “Cas, please tell another joke so I can steal shotgun.”

There’s an expectant silence in the car – the first silence since they left the Bunker. Dean even turns the music down at last.

“What did Adam say the day before Christmas?” He pauses, brow crumpled with complete lack of understanding, before monotoning, “It’s Christmas Eve.”

“Holy shit, Cas,” Sam eventually says, when the silence has begun to stink.

“I suppose it’s funny because of the glaring Biblical inaccuracy –”

“Dean laughed,” Mary says quickly.

“Did he!?”

“I saw it. His mouth twitched.”

“No, I…”

“Stop the car! Mom’s driving!”

Dean helplessly pulls over, and they shuffle around until he’s pressed in beside Cas in the back and Sam’s sprawled blissfully in his usual seat up front, as Mary sets them on their way again.

Jack leans in to Cas and whispers, “What just happened?”

Looking utterly perplexed, Cas replies, “One day you’ll learn there are things they do which have no sensible explanation, and how to tell when it’s pointless to ask.”

Dean shifts around trying to get comfortable while keeping a respectful inch of space between himself and Cas at all costs. He’s still a little pink, smiling to himself, not quite able to berate himself for finding the joke funny – or if not that, to find Cas’s delivery of it helplessly endearing.


	4. Chapter 4

The first flakes of an unexpected snow are falling as Jody gets in from work, late, of course, because people would be making trouble tonight of all nights – unless they’re worse over Christmas of course. Donna’s truck is already parked in the drive, Claire and Patience’s cars stashed out front. No Impala yet, though she thought Dean would drive fast enough to get here by now.

A snowflake lands on her cheek, making her jump a little, and turn her face to the sky. The reports were all for a good clear Christmas day, but a storm could have blown up out of anywhere, she supposes. The Winchesters had better get here soon, is all. If the town gets snowed in she may be busy all day if she has to deal with the extra chaos fresh deep snow brings to the streets.

For now, it’s a few flakes in a patchy sky, so she heads into her house, where all the lights are on in all the windows, including Christmas lights that weren’t there when she left for work in the morning, and she can already hear laughter from inside.

When she gets in the living room has been transformed since she last saw it – gone are Alex’s textbooks, and the lore library Claire has been helping the girls collect; a tree fills one corner of the room, and decorations that Jody’s not had the time to put up all month are hanging all around the room, from tinsel around the stair railings to wreaths on the walls. Fake wreaths. Sam and Dean told her off-handedly long ago not to risk the real kind. While completely ruining Christmas for her in the process.

Donna is stretching to put the star on the top of the tree while Alex holds the chair and Patience looks frozen in horror – “Wait! Stop!” she shrieks, and they all freeze, until the chair creaks ominously. Donna hops down from it, and Patience sags in relief.

“Jodi-o!” Donna yells, like she hasn’t seen Jody in years instead of four and a half days, and flings herself across the room at her. “I got here early and the girls helped me decorate the whole downstairs… Doesn’t it look wonderful!”

She’s bouncing with glee and there are already glasses of wine on the coffee table, so Jody rolls her eyes, and pulls off her coat. “Yes, it’s very festive. Did you see any snow on your way here?”

“No, the skies were clear all the way. It’s such a shame, I love a white Christmas.”

“Looks like you might be getting one here. I need to make a run to the store before it gets any worse. Would you mind staying in case –” Jody thinks she might have summoned them, because there’s a knock and cheerful ring on the doorbell as she speaks.

“It’s unlocked!” she calls, and everyone piles into the room in a noisy rush. Donna yells for Claire and Kaia to join them, and the strangest round of introductions and re-introductions follow.

When the chaos is settling down, Jody leads Mary to the kitchen, since she’s carrying a welcome addition to their stock of alcohol. She feels like slamming the door on the hubbub of Claire and Dean reuniting explosively, and everyone else talking around them.

“I still need to go out to the store to get all the last minute stuff. I should have gone on the way back, but I didn’t know if Donna would be here, or…”

“It’s okay, you can take a break – we’ll handle it,” Mary says, and Jody lets out a huge sigh.

“How are you doing anyway, Mary?”

Mary shrugs one shoulder. “Getting back in the swing of things. Honestly, it’s been so crazy I still have no idea what normal is, or was before, but at least I’m not being tortured in a dead world, huh?”

Jody winces sympathetically. “Yeah, Sam told me about it… I’m glad we have you back.”

Mary laughs, and looks around the kitchen, and jumps slightly to see Jack standing still in the doorway – it makes Jody jump too. She hasn’t had many encounters with this boy, but she knows he was the one who saved Mary, and that he’s in Castiel’s care. She’d never met the angel before, and shaking hands with him, looking him in the eyes and seeing the kindness there… She suddenly understands him wanting to help Claire all those years ago. How strange she’d met both the children he’d adopted before the angel himself, especially when the Winchesters had known Castiel longer than they’d known her. One of the many, many strange things she had been escaping in the kitchen, until the strange things came to join them, smiling benignly.

“Dean sent me to check if you wanted help cooking. I’m not sure if he meant he would, or I –”

“I’ll take you to the store with me,” Mary says at once. Jody knows a save when she sees it.

“That would be wonderful. I only just got in,” Jody says, gesturing her Sheriff’s uniform.

“It’s okay, go take a shower, I’m sure they can all entertain themselves.”

Jody nods, and takes a deep breath to head back out into the chaotic main room. Things have settled down a bit, with mostly everyone seated and catching up in smaller bubbles of conversation, Donna bouncing around asking about drinks and trying to make everyone comfortable to take the slack off Jody for a minute. Claire is taking up a full share of the entire conversation on the girls’ behalf. Kaia is, well, still in the room, which is better than Jody expected. Patience and Alex are sharing the armchair, Alex craning around to watch Jack trailing to the door with Mary, and Patience gawping at Castiel, apparently neither of them having listened to anything Jody said about not being weird about having an angel and his son come visit.

Which, of course, Jody is totally chill about herself.

It all seems so surreal, all she can think is she’s glad that Donna found a star for the top of the tree, because she’s sure she has a ratty old angel decoration they used for years up at the cabin, and if those decorations had got shuffled up and brought here somehow that would have been awkward to explain… Maybe? Would angels even care?

She picks the star up from where Donna left it on the table, and is just eyeing the top of the tree when the star is removed gently from her hands.

“I think I’ve got this,” Sam says, his voice teasing slightly, and he neatly caps the tree for her, like it costs him nothing to reach up barely above his own head height to do it.

“You are a lifesaver, Sam Winchester,” Jody laughs, and suddenly remembers how hungry he always is – that she had specifically bought an entire sack of potatoes earlier in the week that she figured were all for him. “I’m going to go shower but then I’ll cook…”

“I can help,” Sam says at once.

Jody raises an eyebrow. “With the cooking or the showering?”

She’s only teasing, but Sam goes beet red, and she leaves him speechlessly at a loss for what to do with his hands and briefly attempting to lean on the tree – she hurries from the room so she can laugh in peace without making him feel bad about it. She has half a thought that if she poked her head back around the door and caught his eye he’d follow, but she really doesn’t have the time.


	5. Chapter 5

Dean has managed to snag wine, since that’s what’s going, a spot on the sofa next to Cas, and he thinks, if he caught the words right, he has just witnessed the most ridiculously nerdy thing Sam has ever done around a woman with his own two eyes. He is blessed.

Claire is sitting on the arm of the sofa next to him, talking a mile a minute about all the hunts they’ve been on and what she’s killed, and what all the other girls have killed, and how badass Donna is and on and on, smiling more than Dean’s ever seen her smile.

Cas is leaning right into Dean’s space to listen to Claire, and it’s making Dean far more light-headed than the wine on an empty stomach, because Cas doesn’t even seem to know he’s doing it, that he’s got a hand on the back of the sofa behind Dean, and he’s got his body twisted around, his face so close to Dean’s, that if Dean turns to look at him they’ll be nose to nose. Cas’s knees are touching Dean’s leg with none of the respect that Dean gave himself cramp over in the car straining not to press himself against Cas. His words hum in Dean’s ear, and when Sam has finished draining his glass of wine, he meets Dean’s eyes across the room, and Dean knows they’re calling a truce on whatever they _would_ have thought at each other.

Donna’s clattering around in the kitchen doing drinks still, and with perfect timing, nips out, tops up Sam, and heads back in to continue sorting all the bottles that she brought, with theirs and Jody’s collection. Unless they get into a tangle with another alcohol spirit, they’re really taking the holiday period off.

He spots Kaia lurking behind Claire, still standing up, practically blending into the corner. She’s leaning on the wall, picking her nails and not really taking part in anything.

Dean interrupts Claire to say, “But we still took down a dinosaur.”

“You did not!” She looks around for support. “Kaia, you were _there_ , you said…” She trails off, seeing Kaia is grumpily not engaged in the conversation. “Hey, are you okay?”

Kaia mumbles something Dean can’t catch, and Claire says, “Sure.” She hops down from the sofa and smiles apologetically at Dean and Cas. “We’re gonna go for a walk. Kaia’s not too great at parties.”

And a moment later they’ve disappeared. For a strange moment, despite Donna keeping up a loud babble of conversation with Sam as the go-between to the remaining girls, Dean finds himself in what is roughly the most alone time he’s had with Cas for what feels like months.

There is a cowardly part of himself that figures if he gets up and goes into the kitchen he could hang out with Donna and they’d have a blast, maybe flirt a bit to take the heat off Sam and whatever the heck is happening with him and Jody… Cas is a big boy, he can entertain himself. Maybe because he’s the sort who can sit quite happily in the corner in a room full of people…

Dean turns to look at Cas, who is so, so much closer than Dean remembers. His arm is still over the back of the sofa which, Dean vaguely thinks, is supposed to be his move, probably.

“Are you having fun, Dean?” he asks solemnly while Dean gawps at his face.

“Y-yeah. Yeah, I am.”

“I am as well.”

“Good.” Dean smiles helplessly at Cas, and after a moment Cas lets his own face relax into a smile.

“See? Doing nothing is… fun,” Dean says, pushing their utterly fascinating conversation forward another awkward, terrible step while dazzled by the softness of Cas’s expression and how it’s aimed right at him from less than a foot away. Why have they never got a sofa for the Bunker, he thinks.

Donna comes over, armed with the wine for top ups. “Phew, I bet you could do with a top up, Dean, you look frazzled.”

Dean gives her a “you have no idea” eye roll and manages to break the spell, leaning out of Cas’s range to shove his glass at her. He doesn’t quite trust his voice to work properly yet.

“Me too, been on my feet since five,” she chatters, splashing wine into his glass with the exact sort of disregard to the concept of ‘too much’ Dean liked to see.

“Then sit down!” Alex laughs. “Sam’s helping in the kitchen anyway…”

And just like that, they’re drawn back into the main conversation and the moment has dissipated.


	6. Chapter 6

As soon as they get into the store, Jack stops to stare at a display of Christmas decorations, all blinking and moving and playing little loops of music and canned ho-ho-ho-ing. He looks delighted, which figures. He seems to have been born with the universe’s entire supply of optimism, as far as Mary can tell.

It does seem to get him places, at least.

She backtracks her shopping cart to stand level with him and stare at the display. “It really is your first Christmas, huh?”

He looks confused. “I am only seven months old and it is an annual event… I haven’t had a chance yet.”

Mary presses her lips tightly together instead of sassing the cosmically powerful infant.

Jack misses her expression, turning to look at the display again with more open wonderment, but that application to the subject he has for most things that interest him. “People put this in – and on – their homes. To what purpose?”

“Showing off, mostly.”

“You didn’t do it?” His face falls a little, like he doesn’t understand why someone might not like Christmas. Well, he can’t.

“Christmas has got a lot more expensive and commercial since I was a housewife with a house. We got a tree and put up lights in the window, none of this...” She doesn’t really have the words to describe how over-produced Christmas has gotten.

“And this –” he points at one of the outdoor decorations, lights bent into the shape of reindeer, “—encourages Santa to come?”

Right there in the entrance to the Walmart in the middle of Sioux Falls, Mary feels a little bit of herself break. “He – come on, let’s get this shopping done so we can get back and have some wine.”

Jack trails after her, as she consults Jody’s scrawled list. Her eyes are blurring.

A hand on her elbow stops her by a display of Christmas cookies. “Mary, are you… alright?” He sounds more curious than concerned. A little too pleased with himself for noticing and identifying Mary’s distress and trying to do something about it, although who knew where he’d learned honest communication in _this_ family.

“I’m fine,” she says, and pushes the cart onwards.

Jack falls into step, still looking at her with his mouth turning down from his usually permanent smile, which just made Mary feel guilty that she’s upset the kid she owes her life to. A kid who doesn’t even know that Santa isn’t real, but sounds so proud he’s found out all the _other_ parts of Christmas.

“We’re getting you a Christmas stocking,” Mary says.

It doesn’t look like he makes the connection between why she’s fighting off tears in the middle of a store on Christmas Eve and what this statement has to do with anything.

She pretends his confusion is about what she said directly. “Santa Claus comes down the chimney on the night before Christmas – which is tonight – and puts presents in a stocking you leave out, if you’ve been good. Or coal, if you’ve been bad.”

“How does he know?”

“He just does.”

“The motel doesn’t have a chimney,” Jack says, looking _alarmed_. “Will he –”

“He finds a way.” He’s going to be Castiel, since he and Jack are sharing a room. Mary hasn’t got the first idea how to bring it up with the angel, but she’s pretty sure the wine will help with that.

“I suppose he would,” Jack says after a moment of deliberation. “After all, Sam and Dean grew up in motels.”

It’s the matter-of-fact tone, Jack’s absolute, innocent understanding of the universe without even thinking for a second this is the worst upbringing she could ever have ensured for her sons. The tears she’s been fighting off finally leak out and she doubles over the cart to try and hide them, to hold sobs back. She hasn’t cried for all the loss and nightmares and torment she’s been through since she was brought back, but this?

Jack ducks insistently into her vision. “What’s wrong?” he asks. He looks so earnest, like he wants to fix it. Like he _can_ if she just explains what the problem is. Mary feels a sudden impulse to ask him to do it, to wind back time until they all blinked out of existence, then set them all up to try again. And probably fall into all the same traps.

“Last year, Sam and Dean were in prison over Christmas.”

“Oh.”

“I died – I died in November, when Sam was six months old. I have never celebrated Christmas with him. And Dean – Dean still believed…”

“Believed in what?”

“I-In everything. In angels, all of it. I took that from them, all the Christmases we could have had as a family, they could have had in a stable home… It just sometimes hits me. When I think, Sam’s learned to do Christmas without me…”

“I haven’t learned how to do Christmas yet.”

Mary thought about if it would be inappropriate for a fraction of a second, but, he _was_ family, and she owed him _something_ , and… “Hey, run back to the front of the store and get yourself one of the big red stockings with the white fur around the top. They’re the classic ones. We’ll see what Santa brings you.”

Jack’s face breaks into a huge smile now that she looks happy again, and he strides off, with the sort of walk he used when confronting an archangel on her behalf once upon a time. He can bring universes to their knees, she thinks as she wipes her eyes on the back of her hand, but she’s sneaking chocolates into the cart for Santa to give him.

It’s not weird.

It’s not weirder than anything _else_ that happens in their lives.


	7. Chapter 7

“Sooo, you’re an angel.”

“Yes?”

Patience seems to have waited for Dean to get up to go to the bathroom, and Jody to be distracted giggling in the kitchen, to pounce on Cas and start asking.

“A really, real angel.”

He looks around for help, but there’s no one.

“Yes. You have encountered a lot of supernatural and magical things, and have considerable psychic powers of your own, do you not think angels can exist?”

“I mean, yeah, but… wow, not sitting in Jody’s living room, just _talking_ to _me_. Me! Talking to an _angel_. I – So you do actually real angel things?”

“I can –” He stops and looks at her face. She’s thrilled. Almost no one Cas has ever met in his extremely long existence has been _thrilled_ to see him. He leans in conspiratorially and adopts his most solemn voice. “I have a harp.”

Her eyes light up. “You do?”

Cas glances up and sees Dean approaching the sofa.

“It’s our secret,” he says, nodding to her with utter conviction.

“Wow,” she says, tipping her head. “I can usually tell when people are lying but you’re… something else. I aaalmost feel like you are but I can’t really…” She tips her head the other way, still puzzling over him, and Dean flops back into his space next to Cas. He seems to finally be relaxing because his leg nudges Cas’s at once, and it’s like he moulds back into Cas’s space. Patience might have no idea what Cas is doing, but Cas is at sea with how Dean’s been acting, keeping distant one moment, leaning into him the next.

Dean picks settling in next to Cas with his arm over the back of the sofa. “What are you talking about?” he asks cheerfully.

“The latest Star Wars film,” Patience says at once, quick off the mark. She shoots a little glance at Cas, who winks at her, feeling immensely proud that he had some fun with her and used everything Dean has ever teased him about being an angel with to make her feel better.

Dean is quick to say, “Oh, no spoilers, we haven’t had a chance yet.”

Patience cringes. “Us either, but I had a vision warning me that Alex was going to send me a spoilery headline. There’s a lot of adjusting to what _needs_ a premonition, and I’m still getting there…”

Dean laughs hard at that, and Cas feels him moving around to settle even more comfortably up against his side. He wonders what Patience reads in Dean. He half hopes she’ll tell him, unprompted, because Dean _does_ lie, or say things in confusing ways that leave Cas adrift and certain only that he’s not supposed to read Dean’s mind and find out for himself.

He doesn’t think the chances of Patience helping him find his way are very high.


	8. Chapter 8

The snow is falling heavier by the minute as Claire and Kaia walk in step down the street. It’s not icing up the sidewalk yet, and their footsteps are the first to trail through the fresh snow.

Claire can’t help glancing over her shoulder – “At least we’ll be easy to find if we get lost in the blizzard.”

“It takes about five minutes for footsteps to fill in with snow this heavy,” Kaia reassures her.

“I should have geared up to fight a yeti before we left.”

Kaia laughs at that. “Thank you,” said says, after a dozen more crunching footsteps.

“What for?”

“Getting me out of there. I know you were having fun…”

“Pfft, Dean and Cas are –”

“You don’t have to act cool about it. I know you care about them.”

Claire takes an extra stompy step to knock snow off the toe of her shoes, which are soaking through. “Yeah. Guess I care about you more.”

Kaia takes a beat longer to reply than Claire expected, and it’s not snark in return. “I’ll sit through Christmas dinner tomorrow. It’s the one that matters, right?”

“Yeah.”

She smiles at Claire. “Hey, we could go to the diner now. I’ll buy you diner.”

“Are you sure?”

Kaia’s scowl tells Claire, yes, she is, but she doesn’t want to make a big deal out of it.

Claire hurries up her pace so they can get out of the cold.

They grab a corner booth in the deserted diner. The man behind the counter – probably not the Roy who owns “Roy’s”, looks relieved to see them, and is quick to pour coffee, slow to leave their table after talking at length about the sudden snow storm.

Claire texts Jody half under the table while he’s chattering to let her know that they’re still alive but won’t be back until later, then puts her phone down to nurse her coffee.

“You’re still cold,” Kaia says. She’s taken her hood down but Claire is still bundled up in her jacket and hoodie, and if she could she’d pull the drawstrings on the hood all the way closed to seal herself into a cocoon. Her shoes are still soaking but short of taking them off and putting them on a heater there’s not much she can do about that.

“Some of us can’t astral project to the tropical beach universe every time the weather sucks,” Claire points out, setting her coffee down with a shivery rattle.

Kaia grins. “Well, now I know it’s there…” She reaches out across the table and takes both of Claire’s hands in both of hers. They’re toasty warm and fit over Claire’s hands perfectly. “I, um…”

Claire hopes Kaia doesn’t feel her hands immediately turn clammy with sweat as her heart bursts into a faster beat, Kaia’s nervous expression sending a thousand scenarios though Claire’s head before she can stop them.

“I wanted to say thank you as well for, uh, for looking out for me these past few months.”

“Hey, we all have nightmares. I get to climb inside yours and beat them up for you. It’s its own reward. You like sleeping and I like fighting things. Win win.”

“It’s a lot of bad sleep for you, and you could get hurt.”

“Yeah, but you’re so much better now at staying out of the Bad Place. We’ve made a ton of progress.”

“I know. And, uh, I guess that’s why I wanted to say thanks and all. I was kinda rude to you to start with…”

“You were a ray of sunshine compared to how you talked to Patience and Alex. I always knew you liked me best.”

Kaia ducks her head.

“Hey,” Claire says, a bad version of this conversation sinking in and digging roots into her heart. “You don’t wanna stop doing this?”

“No!” Kaia says at once. Too quickly, maybe. It makes Claire smirk, though Kaia’s still looking away and not meeting her eyes.

“Because I’m happy to keep on dreamwalking with you, even if it’s all beaches and fluffy crap.”

Kaia looks up, finally. “You sure?”

Claire laces her fingers with Kaia’s. “Absolutely.” She spots probably-not-Roy heading their way with food, and pulls her hands back.

She feels warm again, though, all the way through.


	9. Chapter 9

“I’ll do the washing up.” Sam stands up, his own plate in hand, almost as soon as the last dessert spoon is down.

“He _never_ does the washing up.”

Jody catches Sam’s eye. “If this is a ruse to wash up when it was pasta, and not a full Christmas dinner, you think again. You’re on dish duty tomorrow too.”

“I just want to help!” Sam complains, feeling Dean’s smug smile on the side of his face without having to turn to look. He grabs an arm full of dishes and scuttles from the room.

Patience and Alex file back and forth with the rest for a few minutes, and he’s almost recovered from whatever _that_ was, when someone coming into the kitchen interrupts his process of knocking abandoned pasta into the bin from the teetering stack of plates.

“There’s probably room _in_ the sink,” he says, and a moment later he feels a sharp jab between his ribs. He looks down to see Donna standing all up in his space scowling at him.

“Hey, listen here, you great gangling giant…”

“What.”

He gets another poke in his chest, which makes him yelp.

“If you hurt Jodi-o you’re going to have me to go through, I can tell you –”

“Dude! We’re not doing anything! Hold up! Hold up!” He raises his hands in defeat, and Donna scowls harder at him.

“I know what you Winchesters are like, disappearing off to parallel universes for months at a time. Or Hell. Or _prison_. So you –”

“Do you think Jody _likes_ me?”

“Ugh!” Donna says, somehow more disgusted and disappointed with him than anyone Sam has ever met in his entire life has been, and that’s a pretty tough playing field. “I see the way you’ve been flirting all evening, and you know what my dad always says? He says don’t eat where you poop –”

“Does he actually say poop?”

Donna scowls at him. “Dating work people is the worst idea, Sam,” she says, deflating a little. “I just… I don’t want you to be Jody’s Doug.” Sam takes a moment too long to remember and she must see it on his face. “My ex! Doug!”

“Oh, the one who was a dick.”

“Yes, him! So if you’re gunna do Jody’s dishes tonight, you’re doing them tomorrow as well, you get me?”

“I literally just agreed to do that.”

She sighs. “I’m sorry… Well, I’m not, but maybe I shouldn’t’ve poked you so many times.”

“I understand. So. Um.”

“Yes?”

“Y-you’re absolutely sure she likes me?”

Donna pats Sam on the arm. “You don’t have to worry. I’m pretty sure she’s been checkin’ out your tushy every time you’ve left the room.”

Sam laughs awkwardly, rubbing his neck, which is red hot by now. “That would explain why she sent me to the kitchen so many times to get spoons…”

Donna cackles about that until Sam can’t help but join in with her infectious laugh, and _thankfully_ at that point Mary comes into the kitchen, and Sam’s incredibly grateful for the distraction.

“What are you laughing about?” Mary asks.

“Uh… this mug,” Sam says, looking around desperately and his eyes falling on the upside down mug in the rack beside the sink.

Mary tips her head to read it, and laughs. “Funny, Jody just sent me in here to get coffees so everyone sobers up a bit before walking home on the ice… Maybe I should…”

“Mom, _no_.”

Mary goes over to the cupboard and opens it up, revealing Jody’s entire novelty mug collection, taking them out counting off names and double-checking with Sam if he remembers how they all take coffee. “Why does Jody have so many terrible mugs?” she wonders aloud.

“She keeps on gettin’ them for Christmas!” Donna says. “Don’t tell her but I got her in the Secret Santa we did, and mine’s going to be a _doozy_. She’ll never know I was the one who got it for her!” She taps her nose, and they laugh. Sam, distracted from cleaning, puts on coffee as Donna and Mary start picking through novelty mugs.

“Oh, this is Jody’s mug,” Donna says, handing Sam a pink one with cursive on it reading, _“Ladylike… Motherfucker_.”

“I’m taking this one,” Mary says, picking out one that has Sam convinced for half a second she’s playing it safe with the Coca Cola logo and he doesn’t have to die of shame, but a moment later he realises the red writing just says “ _Cock_.”

“Mom, please, I’m begging you… Wait, what does that one say?”

Donna read out, “ _’The hardest part of my job is being nice to stupid people_.’”

“Oh I have to give that to Cas,” Sam says. “I know he doesn’t even always drink coffee but come on, he’s not getting out of this one.”

“Here, you can have the matching one,” Donna says, waving one at him which reads “ _I’m not always rude and sarcastic… Sometimes I’m asleep._ ” “We give it to Kaia a lot but she won’t mind.”

He sees the squat blue mug sitting behind this one, and laughs out loud. “Oh, and lemme guess, Jody got that one for you?”

Donna looks down at the mug, which cheerfully says “ _WHAT THE H*CK_ ” and pushes it behind the others.

“Aw, come on, you have to.”

She rolls her eyes. “Fine. Hey, come on, these coffees won’t make themselves.”

Donna sighs, picking up two more mugs to take out to the next room. “Aw, heck, I think we just started a new Christmas ritual.”


	10. Chapter 10

Somehow Dean’s got the sofa with Cas again, like people are actually _letting_ them hang out together. It’s strange and unsettling because nothing’s stopped him yet.

Claire sits opposite in the armchair, looking bedraggled from the snow, sipping from her mug, and staring really hard at Dean. When he thinks he’s about to snap from the pressure, she slowly nods her head at Cas and raises an eyebrow.

Dean blushes hard and takes a long drink from his coffee to hide his face, then looks down at the mug, a matching one in white with black text beside the handle, which, handle not included, reads “ _ICK_ ,” looks back at Claire, and hastily puts his mug down on the table, hard enough that coffee splashes over the sides. He stands up before Cas can ask him what’s wrong, though Dean catches him looking surprised at Dean’s sudden violent action, after they’d been sitting in pleasant companionable silence for ages.

“Okay, I think it’s time to go home, it’s late, we’ve had a long day. Come on, people.”

Claire laughs and shakes her head at him. “Catch ya in the morning.”

It actually takes another half an hour to hustle out of the door, since Sam won’t stop doubling back to talk to Jody about extremely inane Christmas things she’s already prepared for and no she doesn’t need them to get anything, Mary already did that, and it’s fine Sam… Dean’s about to intervene and do what Sam hates the most – wingman it and tell him to just stay or catch up with then when he’s ready, wink wink, but the party’s completely dead, the rest of the family are lurking at the door, and Sam fails to muster up the confidence to do anything, because he finally backs off promising they’ll see Jody tomorrow, like that isn’t the entire freakin’ reason they’re here in the first place.

Walking back in the snow is fun for one member of their group only – Jack’s fascinated, like he’s never really seen, or at least stopped to appreciate, snow before. He keeps turning around and grinning at them and Dean doesn’t have the usual buffer he has because Mary and Cas have fallen behind, talking together, leaving him with Sam, who is scuffing his feet and grinning.

Dean sort of wants to tease him but he also just, personally, spent an entire evening in a weird warm bubble of being glued to Cas’s side without doing anything about it, so really, those who live in glass creepy underground bunkers…

“You know,” Sam says, while Dean is still kicking the snow and thinking really hard about how to tease or not tease Sam, “You’re probably right about us having a few days off.”

Dean raises an eyebrow at him, like, _you think_?

“It’s just… Seeing all our family here…”

“Our weird, _weird_ family.”

“Yeah.” Sam laughs. “Having Mom, and Cas, and Jack… And what Jody’s got with Donna and all the girls and we get to spend Christmas with them…”

Dean knows this feeling – he’s felt it before, right when they had Mary and Cas back the first time, and he sort of fears to hope but it’s been months and nothing terrible has happened to their family. Jack’s like a weird lucky mascot, bringing them all back, and somehow around him, they’ve made the shape of a family, odd as it is, that they never managed to make _settle_ before. They didn’t get to do Christmas. They had a weird take out dinner party and then everything went progressively to Hell one step at a time until they’d lost everything.

“You really think this is our family now?”

“I mean, yeah?” Sam asks, baffled.

Dean shakes his head, trying to find the right words. “No, that’s it’s not – not going anywhere any time soon. We get to enjoy this?”

Sam raises his eyebrows. “You already are. Aren’t you? You were thrilled when we got Cas back…”

“Yeah, I mean. I don’t know…” He really doesn’t. It still feels somehow unfinished for him, and he doesn’t want to put words to it, especially not walking down the street still kind of tipsy, with his family all kind of to completely in earshot considering definitely Cas and maybe Jack have weird super-hearing. And the ‘definitely Cas’ is the problem. “I’m not complaining,” Dean concludes, feeling like it’s kind of half-hearted. “It’s better than last year, right?”

“Ugh, don’t even joke about it.”

“Hey and you’re going to be Jody’s kitchen bitch tomorrow.”

“ _Don’t_ joke about that.”

Dean grins at Sam, who rolls his eyes, and looks away, smiling. He doesn’t jab back at Dean about the Cas thing, so maybe Dean has just been paranoid about it.

He glances over his shoulder, to see Cas is looking genuinely terrified of whatever Mary is saying to him, but they come up to the motel before Dean can decide if he’s supposed to save him or not.

 


	11. Chapter 11

Alex looks up from her phone at the sound of her door opening, and musters up a vague, “Hey,” as Claire wanders in, wrapped in a huge bath towel, her hair dripping from the end of a messily wrapped towel turban.

Claire goes over to the vanity and starts rummaging around, knocking things over. “Hey!” Alex says. “What are you doing?”

“I’m looking for… stuff. I don’t know, girly things. I own like eighteen eyeliners and the bath bombs you got me last Christmas. What is all this junk?”

“How does your hair look so good all the time then?”

“I steal your shampoo and it does the rest by itself, duh. I’m flawless.” She stops pillaging Alex’s stuff to pose for half a second, batting her eyelashes, before resuming her search.

Alex rolls her eyes – with her dead straight hair she _wishes_ she hadn’t seen Claire roll straight from the shower onto a hunt and somehow her hair set itself in perfect loose curls in the car by the time they got there. “So what the hell is this about? And quit touching my stuff before you answer.”

Claire turns around with a handful of lotions and hair products. “I dunno, I wanna smell nice, or whatever you’re supposed to do.”

“Do for what?”

Claire looks shifty, and her hair towel is slowly slipping to one side.

“God, _please_ tell me you don’t have some weird DILF thing going with Dean or I am yelling for Jody to lock you in the basement.”

“I don’t! Ew! God, thanks for the mental image, you’re ruining my life. How is that the first thing –” The towel flops over her face, startling her, and she has to scramble to adjust all her towels, thankfully putting down all the products she’s holding.

Alex tries not to laugh, but pats the bed. “Come on, talk to me. I won’t tease you. You’re the big sister I never wanted, but now we’re here... We help each other out.”

Claire over-dramatically flops onto the bed. Because she does everything over-dramatically. Alex is half-expecting this to be nothing, just some weird thing Claire is going through. A belated discovery of a skin care routine might not be such a bad thing. Alex has made such an effort to be normal and do all the stuff normal girls that hadn’t been raised by vampires are supposed to do, like learning to pamper herself for her own sake and no one else’s, and, honestly, it is a relief to have Patience around cluttering the bathroom with hair products because it makes Alex feel less like she is trying too hard, while having Claire around she was pretty sure for the first few months she was rebelliously not showering just to spite them. The bath bombs had been a terrible, passive-aggressive idea, in hindsight, since she’s watched them sit unused on the shelf for an entire year now. She had _also_ gotten Claire a book on ghosts, so it wasn’t like she didn’t know her at all…

“I’m pretty sure Kaia finally noticed I was hitting on her, and she’s into it.”

Maybe not, then.

“Uh. For real?”

“Yeeeah? I mean she held my hands. And giggled when I said stuff to her.”

“Kaia. Was giggling?”

Claire actually looks scared. “I think so?” she asks, like Alex can confirm any of this.

“I mean, she follows you around like a lost puppy most of the time… I don’t think she cares if you smell bad. You two keep falling asleep together in the back of the car when you’re both still covered in monster guts.”

Claire smiles fondly. “Yeah, we do.”

“Wow.”

“What?”

“You really have it bad for her, don’t you?”

“She’s pretty cool, you know?”

“Just… tell her that. And remember I have an adjoining wall to you.”

“Aw, shut up.”

“Seriously, though… I’m happy for you. You’ve been way cooler since Kaia joined us.”

“Wow, thanks.”

“I mean, we’re up to our ears in strange monsters, but you seem to have found some peace.”

“God, I came here to steal from you, not get this sappy speech, it’s fine, I’ll stop dripping all over your room, I can see you want me gone.”

Alex laughs, and waves as Claire sees herself out.


	12. Chapter 12

“Yeah, Dad, we’ve saved so many people this month… I see it coming and we get there with so much time to help.”

“Are you safe, though, honey?”

“They’ve taught me to shoot and swing a machete, and –”

“That’s not what I’m asking and you know it.”

“…Yeah, I think I have déjà vu because you keep _asking_ me. Dad, I can’t fight monsters if I don’t get near the monsters.”

“I just – I wish you’d come home for Christmas.”

“What if something happens? I’m needed here, Dad. I _want_ to be here.”

“It doesn’t hurt to ask. I miss you.”

“I know, I’m sorry.”

“Merry Christmas, sweetheart.”

“Merry Christmas, Dad.”

Patience hangs up and sighs. She’s slipped out to take the call at the back of the house, watching the snow pile up beyond the overhang. She’s right by the kitchen – she can hear Jody and Donna laughing just on the other side of the window, as they finish off what was a quarter full bottle of wine left over from the evening. Tidying up. It won’t dent the store they have for tomorrow.

She wasn’t allowed to drink and it is pretty boring being the youngest – well, no. But Jack, who everyone kept implying was literally less than a year old somehow and enjoying his first Christmas, had been allowed to drink whatever he liked.

The door opens and Patience glances around, expecting someone to tell her to come in from the cold. It’s Kaia, who somehow never gets on Patience’s psychic radar, like their two different brands of weird cancel each other out.

“You’re lurking in my spot,” Kaia says with a half-smile, coming over and sitting on one of the old porch chairs.

“I was here first.”

“I’m kidding, yikes.”

Patience scowls, and checks the time on her phone. It’s late, but of course Dad always somehow knows when to call at a perfect time, whether he had other gifts or not.

“I think I should go to bed…”

“Don’t get scared off because of me. I just wanna sit here for a bit and collect my head.”

“I’m not scared of you!”

“I didn’t say you were.”

Patience folds her arms and stays seated.

Kaia looks away, fiddling with a loose strand of her scarf. “Hey, I, um, heard your phone call, actually.”

“You were snooping on me?”

“I had my hand on the door and heard you yelling that you wanted to be here.”

“Oh. I – I wasn’t yelling.”

“Kinda were. Doesn’t matter. I wanted to say… I’m glad you’re staying.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. You so totally have our backs, and, I don’t know, I want you to know we have yours too.”

“You’re not normally this friendly. It’s… strange.”

“We’re family, I suppose. Whether we want to be or not. Might as well embrace the weird psychic little sister who always comes rushing in when you’re about to start messing with a gun when the safety is off, huh?”

Patience laughs, but in a kind of horrified way, remembering several times she predicted Kaia’s untimely and disappointing end. “I’m just trying to help.”

“It’s nice to know there’s a whole bunch of people out there who care about me, is all,” Kaia shrugs.

“You sound surprised.”

“It all just hit home today, I guess.”

“I thought you had issues with the Winchesters.”

“Well, yeah, I don’t love ‘em or anything, but you have to admit, that room was pretty full of all the lovey dovey big happy family vibes, and I thought it was going to give me hives, but ten minutes or so of it wasn’t so bad. ”

Patience snorts. “Yeah, did you see how Sam was giggling all over Jody? Are we supposed to be embarrassed, or…”

“Oh, she can get it with him, I’m rooting for them all the way.”

Patience bursts into nervous laughter, well aware of the thin wall between themselves and Jody and Donna cracking up. In the lull after their giggles they hear Donna’s voice rising, “He’s so _tall_ though – you’d have to climb right up him!” and Jody bellowing with laughter.

Kaia rolls her eyes at Patience. “You know what, I’m climbing over the fence and coming back in by the front door. You in? If you don’t see us slipping and dying in the snow or something.”

Patience grimaces. “Yeah. Okay. I think we’ll be fine. You’re not sneaking out then?”

“No, I’m pretty sure I want to be here tonight.”


	13. Chapter 13

Everyone’s understandably exhausted and ready to crash into bed – even Jack took only a few words from Mary about it being traditional to sleep on the night before Christmas to wake up to the next day properly to agree to try and sleep. And then they all went their separate ways, and Dean’s in a room with Sam in the next bed over, Mary in a room on one side, and on the other a thin wall between himself and possibly the only other person still awake right now, as the first half hour of Not Sleeping passes and he begins to feel a long night settling on him.

He rolls over and sneaks his phone off the nightstand, hunkers down under the covers, and checks his email. Goes to texts and stares at the inbox until the phone goes dark.

He unlocks it again, and opens the text conversation with Cas. The last few things are all seemingly trivial dribble about where they are, how long until they’re home, a few sparse comments on what they’re doing or feeling. He _felt_ each one though. Each little warm bubble in his stomach of knowing Cas was an hour away and heading closer by the moment. Every grumpy comment on the weather being foul, or sunset pictures taken from a car window.

A text appears from his fingers onto the screen before his brain can catch up, his heart putting this weird feeling that’s been bugging him all day out there, and when he panics and sees what he wrote, his treacherous fingers hit send out of habit.

“I miss you.”

He lies there, heart pounding hard, and has the dimly realised self-preservation to switch his phone to silent, as his heart continues thudding without slowing down, knowing an answer can’t be far.

“I’m in the next room.”

His chest _hurts_. He may actually die from the combined horror and embarrassment he’s feeling. The way he let his guard down in a moment of one in the morning tipsy thoughtlessness.

“I know that dumbass, I’m just saying.”

What is he _typing. Why_. Wine is bad. Wine is very bad. He didn’t even think it got you drunk, and now he’s having an anxiety attack while yelling at Cas via text message. He has to fix this – a friendly emoticon to show he doesn’t mean harm. He picks the blushy smile because oops my bad for texting you at one in the morning with weird emotional bullshit. Except once it’s on the screen sending through the wall to Cas, he thinks, _not the blushing one, that’s the worst you could have sent_.

“I miss you too.”

It turns out there _is_ a harder beat his heart can take, but only after swooping right through about six missed beats.

He’s staring at his phone wondering what the _hell_ to do with this, when Cas texts again.

“Do you believe in Santa Claus?”

“Don’t you? He’s a saint right?”

“Saint Nicholas is barely connected to the commercial stories about modern day Santa Claus.” Disappointed emoji. Santa emoji.

“We could have all turned him into a tulpa.”

“The imagination of children is particularly powerful.”

“Why are you asking?” Because, no offense, this is the weirdest non sequitur ever after Dean spilled his guts and he’s feeling pretty mixed up and vulnerable right now and he and the four glasses of wine are not afraid to admit it.

“Mary asked me to act as Santa Claus tonight and put some treats in a stocking she obtained for Jack.” Scared emoji. The damn Santa emoji again.

“Well if he believes in Santa then Santa exists now. Maybe kick back and see if he shows up and does the job for you.”

“That is not particularly reassuring.”

Dean grins at his phone.

“Dude, who are you texting?”

In a tangle of blankets, Dean rolls over to see Sam squinting at him through the darkness.

“No one,” Dean says, and hears his voice betray him with a slight squeak.

“Can you text no one without all the theatrics? You keep flashing your screen at me.”

“Roll over.”

“You roll over.”

It seems the blankets have slipped down with the intensity he was texting at. Dean hauls them right back up over his head, and curls under them. “Is this good enough?” he asks, making his voice deliberately muffled.

“It’ll do,” Sam grumbles from the other side of the room.

Dean looks back at his phone, where Cas has written, “I can hear Sam complaining. Sorry to get you into trouble.”

“At least we were just texting about Santa,” Dean shoots back, and starts to wonder if regret doesn’t kill you instantly, can too many doses at once build up like a poison. He hopes beyond hope Cas doesn’t get the innuendo in there, doesn’t see anything strange at all –

“What else could we be texting about that would be worse?”

Dean stares at that for a very long time.

“Hey,” Sam says. “ _Would_ it be weird if Jody and I…”

“Go the fuck to sleep.”

“Wow, okay.”

“I mean, sure, do whatever, it’s not weird. She’s super cool, and you’re both consenting adults, right?”

“Are you okay? You sound really weird.”

“It’s two in the morning and you’re bugging me for relationship advice. We don’t do sleepovers, Sammy. I’ll get Mom in here to paint your toenails if you keep at it.”

“All right, jeeze.”

There’s a silence. Dean looks at his phone again. “ _What else could we be texting about that would be worse._ ”

“Is this about who you’re texting?” Sam asks.

“Oh my _god_ I’m going to go sleep in the car if you say anything else. Remember when we had personal lives? As in, our own personal shit?”

“Okay, I’m just saying, please remember I’m in the room.”

“What does that mean?”

“Don’t like… start sexting someone. I don’t care if you have some hook up you’re cruising for but… not when I’m in the room.”

Dean wants to defend himself but he is hit with the sudden horror that Cas is probably overhearing everything anyway.

“I’m going to sleep. Goodnight, Sam.”

Sam makes a huffy noise, and then says, “Good night, Dean.”

Dean waits a very long time, until he hears Sam’s breathing even out and his brother definitely has nodded off this time.

The same message is waiting there, without Cas interrupting or weighing in on whatever he heard through the walls.

It’s so late and Dean’s drifted right back through to sober and grumpy and he wants another hit of that crazy fluttering feeling to top him back up. He starts typing without much rational thought. “We could be sexting.”

Cas replies after a very long minute of non-stop heart fluttering and a deep hot feeling in his guts. Bad idea, bad idea, bad idea, he tells himself.

“That would had been much more awkward.”

“Yeah think we have to take a rain check on it Kris Kringle.”

He stares at his phone.

Cas sends back the Santa emoji.

Dean turns his phone all the way off and unsuccessfully attempts to sleep and not think about what the hell just happened for four hours.


	14. Chapter 14

There’s leaves in Claire’s hair when she wakes up. She’s warm and comfortable and curled protectively around Kaia but her hair is tangled with stuff from a forest floor when she struggles to sit up and push it out of her face. Kaia, still sleeping or struggling to stay asleep now Claire is moving around next to her, is considerably worse off, her hair a mess of twigs and bits of leaf.

Claire nudges her bare shoulder with the back of her hand. “Hey, wake up, Tinkerbell.”

Kaia half-opens an eye. “Why am _I_ Tinkerbell?”

“You spirited me away to Never Never Land last night.”

Kaia snuggles down into the blankets. “You’re Tinkerbell and you know it.” She opens her eyes properly. “I think I left my shirt in fairyland a last night.”

“Whoops,” Claire says because there isn’t really another thing to say or do about that.

There’s a knock at the door and Claire grabs a discarded hoodie from the end of the bed and throws it at Kaia.

“Yeah, what?!” she yells at the door.

“You going to stay in bed all morning?”

“Go away, Alex.”

She opens the door instead, and Claire can see Patience peeking over her shoulder as well.

“Ugh,” Kaia says, emerging from the neck of the hoodie and her hair springing back into messy shape. It’s kind of adorable, Claire thinks, and if they were alone she’d be picking leaves out and teasing gently.

The girls come into the room and close the door behind them. “Jody left about half an hour ago with whatever she’s doing with the Winchesters… We need to get a move on.” Alex sits on the end of the bed with the clear intent not to budge until Claire and Kaia show a sign of getting up.

Patience hasn’t moved from the door, and Claire shoots a confrontational look at her. It just makes Patience say, “Oh!” and slap a hand over her mouth.

“What?” Kaia asks, sounding worried like Patience just had another vision – that there’s something they’ll have to do on Christmas day. Not that Claire minds – the dinner sounds exhausting and a hunt would be fun. But she got a different vibe from Patience, and sure enough…

“Are you two sleeping together?”

“Have been the whole time,” Claire points out. She knows it’s a pointless defence, but Patience should remember how Claire had talked about going into the Bad Place with Kaia in her dreams and not been secretive that Kaia had been sleeping in the same bed, only to keep the connection strong that Claire would be able to come too; holding hands works as well as doing any ritual as long as Kaia _wants_ to bring Claire. It’s a weak comeback but she’s not sure how defensive she should be, and glances at Kaia, who looks really scared.

(She catches sight of Alex in the corner of her eye while glancing between Kaia and Patience, and sees her mostly just looking like she’d like to die and not be in the middle of this right now.)

“N-not to help with the Bad Place, I mean –”

“Did you psychic that up?” Kaia demands.

“No – uh – you’re all rumpled and leafy and wearing each other’s clothes…”

“We could look like that from fighting monsters all night.”

Claire takes Kaia’s hand on top of the covers. “It’s okay. We can trust them. Jody and Donna too. This isn’t an issue.” She grabs Alex’s hand with her spare. “Right?”

“You are _so_ much more sappy than you used to be,” Alex tells her.

Claire pulls a face at her.

Patience unknots her arms. “I’m not judging, obviously I’m… I’m – just surprised…”

“Get over here,” Kaia snaps.

Patience climbs onto the bed for the mandatory group hug, which lasts long enough that Kaia has to wipe some tears onto Claire’s shoulder and Claire starts squirming to be free because this is way too much touchy feely stuff for the morning.

“Okay, seriously though,” Alex says from somewhere in the middle of the hug, “We need to get Jody’s present ready. C’mon get up. Get dressed.”

“Ugh, okay, mom!” Claire complains. “Give us the room so we can get dressed.”

Alex and Patience leave, giving them the only five minutes Claire reckons they’ll get today.

“You good?” she asks Kaia at once. She may have told Alex but that was confidential BFF gossip and not something that the whole group was supposed to acknowledge immediately, and Kaia’s put up so many walls, been so careful about how she gets dragged into things with them all...

She shrugs one shoulder. “Kinda just thinking it got really official really fast. I’m good with that. I mean. I just mean… Feel like you’re kinda stuck with me now.”

“Good.”


	15. Chapter 15

Jack sleeps through the whole night, which is rare, and when Cas had once commented on that to Mary, she’d made this weird laugh he’d never heard her make before and pointed out that her (at the time) four month olds had neither been so good as Jack.

Of course Jack is more likely to be up all night researching lore and spells.

Aside from sneaking into the stocking all the goods from the shopping bag Mary discreetly passed to Cas, he himself has spent the night staring at his phone filled with the strangest mix of regret and anticipation. It was the worst text conversation he’d ever had with Dean but somehow it had been full of… promise might be the wrong word. A shift of tone, definitely. He’d caught most of his and Sam’s argument through the wall because, well, walls are thin around him. He’s deeply, deeply unsure what it means that Dean had made the choices he had done.

But the sun is starting to come up, and Jack sits up with his hair rumpled on one side, where he’d lain unmoving the entire night save for his slight inhalations… He looks very seriously at Cas and says, “Merry Christmas.”

Cas has seen enough Christmas movies – or ‘seen’ some thanks to Metatron, where Dean hasn’t made him sit down to watch them together – to know the script here. “Merry Christmas. It seems Santa came in the night.”

Jack’s eyes go wide. “Did you see him?”

“I – uh.” Cas looks helplessly around and his eyes fall on the phone in his hands. “I was texting,” he announces.

“Oh.”

“Santa Claus moves fast. He has to visit seventy five million eight hundred and sixty five thousand three hundred and twelve homes – or motels in this case – so of course he is undetectable to the eye.” Cas is starting to think lying to children is, perhaps not fun, but uncomfortably easy.

And that’s the thing. He’s just started to learn the complexities of white lies, situational truths that harm no one and thinks he just about understands the subtext of Dean’s texts. Since Dean doesn’t use emojis to make it clear. Jack… Jack needs this. Mary didn’t have to say it to Cas, but…

Jack hauls up the stocking from where it had been hung at the foot of the bed, and looks at it with genuine fear, his face somewhat ashen.

Cas wonders if maybe this is too much, but he’s stuck in Mary’s supposedly harmless lie now.

Jack tips over the stocking in a rush and stares at the mess of candy, miniature oranges and small things like a pocket knife, flashlight, a miniature set of shaving cream and body spray, and a pen shaped like a candy cane… Jack stares at it all for a moment and then says, “It’s not coal.”

“I suppose Santa thinks you’ve been good this year.”

“I have hurt a lot of people.”

“You saved all of us. Mary and myself especially. I think it’s the intent that matters. Mostly. Don’t get into an argument about it with Dean.”

Jack looks back at the pile of cheap junk on the bed in front of him, marvelling at it.

Cas checks his phone, even though he knows Dean is asleep in the next room.

He hears footsteps outside though that are almost certainly Mary, and gets up to answer just as she starts to knock. “Oh, good morning, Castiel,” she says, getting her bearings again quickly after the shock, and peers around Cas at once. “Did Santa come?”

Cas doesn’t know when exactly he ended up trapped in this weird situation, but it’s probably a lot further back than agreeing to come on this trip. Probably dating back to taking accidental guardianship of Jack. “Yes, he did,” he says, narrowing his eyes at Mary.

She sidles around him to go say Merry Christmas to Jack.

Cas rolls his eyes to himself, and goes to wake Sam and Dean up, since they need to be awake soon anyway.

The snow has stopped and the motel owner is up as early as Cas is, shovelling snow out of the empty parking spaces and huffing out great clouds of breath. Cas would probably offer to help if he had the time, but he doesn’t so he just awkwardly waves when the man catches him watching. The sky is clear and not currently threatening more snow, at least, which is good because they may have been trapped in town otherwise. At least for today, it’s not a problem. He smiles, and knocks on the next door over.

Ten minutes later, Cas finds himself standing back in that same spot outside their rooms, leaning on the low fence between the walk outside the motel room doors and the parking lot, watching Dean drink coffee from a steaming mug. A far less lewd one than the one from Jody’s house.

Dean hasn’t said anything yet, but it’s probably only a matter of time before the weird end to their texting conversation has to come up. Or the weird start of it. Cas still can’t quite understand why Dean would say that he misses him when they spent the entire day together, unless he starts mixing the two strange things together, but…

With a yawn, Dean sets down his mug on the top of the fence and stretches, and when his joints pop in his shoulders and back, mutters, “son of a bitch” to himself in a grumpy way. Cas feels strangely lucky to share this private little moment with Dean, just because it’s so utterly mundane.

“Can I do anything to help with that?” Cas asks.

“Nah, I’ve just been thrown into too many walls over time,” Dean grumbles. “Didn’t sleep well last night.”

“I know. You were texting me until three.”

“You kept replying.”

Cas smiles at Dean, because he doesn’t know what he’s supposed to do or say which isn’t about the conclusion to their conversation. Dean smiles back, blushing, or pink in the cold. Cas can’t tell except that Dean seems shy to meet his eyes now.

The sound of an approaching vehicle has Cas turning away, looking over his shoulder as Jody’s truck pulls into the parking lot.

“You boys ready?” she calls from the window.

“I’ll get Sam,” Dean says, and thumps Cas on the shoulder as a gesture to move him towards the truck.

He gets in and sits in the back by habit.

Jody turns and smiles sleepily at him. “How ya doing? You look… strange.”

“I have been told I’m strange a lot.”

“Nah, you look _spooked_. Are you okay?”

“Mary and I created validation out of nothing for Jack to assure him he’s good. Does self-esteem really come from such fragile things as well-meant lies?”

Jody blinks at him.

He stares back.

“I’m gonna need like three more coffees before I can answer that, do you want to check in later, or…?”

“I’m sorry, forget it. I am trying to decide –” He glances at the motel. He can hear faintly from this distance Dean badgering Sam to pick a shirt and leave the room. There’s time – he pulls his phone out, opens it to Dean’s conversation from last night, and hands it to Jody. “I need to be convinced he was about to kiss me before you pulled up.”

Reading and scrolling up a little and reading some more, her eyebrows raise higher with each flick of her finger on the screen. “Wow. Well, uh, I had no idea you were Dean’s type until just now, but I don’t even know why I’m surprised. He tells me _nothing_. This is all pretty personal, though, Castiel. I don’t wanna confirm anything, but reading this, he seems perpetually one bad decision away from asking what you’re wearing, if you know what I mean.”

Cas glances down and pulls on his lapel. “Always this.”

She hands the phone back. “Well if he asks, you know what that means.”

“What does it mean?”

She makes a weird face, and Cas turns to see Dean and Sam coming out of the motel at long last. Dean makes a beeline for the backseat with the more obvious intent of letting Sam ride upfront than angling towards Cas, and they’re on the road while they’re still making awkward small talk good mornings and how are yous, and Jody talks about what she’s going to cook for five minutes and then they’re on the edge of town.

Cas has rarely driven into the old salvage yard, but everyone else goes quiet as they reach the gates. Jody pulls up right by them, and hops out, fishing out a set of keys from her pocket. “Well I doubt anyone’s come and shovelled the rest so we walk from here.”

The gates are locked with chains, the huge wooden fence around the property has been heavily covered in graffiti since Cas last saw it, and the space beyond is clearly overgrown between the cars, and the snow is heavy enough that some of the shorter cars sitting on their own are mostly buried. Jody unlocks everything and Cas doesn’t need to be asked to be the one to shove the gate open through all the snow. He pushes it shut again, and sees the others are already silently looking at the blackened skeleton of the house.

Bobby didn’t die here, nor was his actual death the last time any of them saw him. But between the fresh weirdness of meeting a Bobby in the apocalypse world, and being here in town for Christmas for the first time in seven years, Sam and Dean and Jody had cooked up this plan last night, and Cas wouldn’t have missed it. He had shared enough side-eyed looks about the Winchesters being ridiculous with Bobby over the years to feel a deep sense of kinship with him. They weren’t _always_ the only sensible voices in a room, but it had been statistically likely.

The remains of the house are too dangerous to go in, and too overgrown to make it worth trying, but they can go to the space by the old autoshop part of the ground. The cars are all being swallowed by long grasses and climbing plants, currently brown and limp where they’re visible from under the snow. Jody had told Cas she takes the girls out here to learn to shoot.

When they’re standing out of the wind by the old racks of tyres, Dean produces a bottle of the cheapest whiskey he could find at short notice and pours a splash out. They all take a swig from the bottle, and Cas feels Dean watching him closely as he hands it over and Cas drinks after him.

His eyes stay on Cas, so Cas puts a hand on Dean’s shoulder. He looks away, but to turn his eyes up at the ruin of the house.

“Ya know, we had some truly shitty Christmases here. Grinchy fucker wouldn’t decorate, and he made us all canned chili that year we couldn’t get back in enough time to cook ourselves and at least force a TV dinner version of Christmas on him.”

“Didn’t like him for his festive cheer,” Jody says.

Dean laughs at that, nodding.

Sam says, “He’d probably be threatening to shoot us from an upstairs window by now if he could see what we were doing.”

“Yeah… Hey since it’s what he’d want, I’m gonna ruin the moment and go look for some Impala parts he had set aside for me… See if no one’s looted them and they’re any good still. You guys can go back to the truck if you don’t wanna stand around in the cold. I won’t be long.”

Cas is momentarily trapped between Jody giving him some fearsome eyebrow gestures and Dean giving him a lingering look asking him to stay with a sort of unspoken tug in Cas’s heart that Dean broadcasts, he’s silently asking so hard. Both of them asking him to do exactly what he intended. It’s _Sam_ who he catches looking sympathetically at him. “I don’t feel the cold,” Cas says. “I can stay to keep you company.”

Dean seems to sigh with relief, and he heads into the overgrown shed, decaying and storm-damaged after half a decade of disuse, but structurally sound enough not to worry Cas. Another few years and it might start to collapse properly.

They don’t talk about anything in particular; Dean wanders the shelves and finds what he was looking for almost immediately and seems disappointed when he has to haul the box down off the shelf and gesture Cas they should head back as well, an in and out chore. Cas offers to take the box, and Dean postures and grumbles but hands it over, then smiles helplessly at Cas the entire way back, constantly keeping him in the corner of his eye.

When they get in sight of the truck, Dean sighs. “Aw, I buy ‘em all that time and they’re not making out? What’s the point?”

Cas still wants to pretend to be brave, to cling to the idea he can change things with little harmless lies like that this is all totally acceptable and not going to end in disaster for trying. “Was that what this was? Buying _them_ time together?”

Dean looks terrified for a fraction of a second before he says, “Nah, I needed you to carry all this, so I was hoping you’d stay with me, is all.” Obviously, he is immensely more practiced than Cas at this art. He flashes a grin and leaves Cas to put the box of parts in the back of the truck; Jody hops out of the truck to lock the gates up again. But when they’re sitting in the warmth again, as they get back underway, Dean’s hand sneaks across the backseat and his fingers brush over the back of Cas’s hand, before he seems to lose his nerve and pull his hands back into his lap.

Cas takes out his phone and texts Dean, “What are you wearing? ;)”

Dean reads his phone, looks utterly confused for a moment, and then cracks up into laughter he refuses to let past shaking shoulders and screwed up eyes, almost all the way back to Jody’s.

He texts back, after five minutes of trying to recover, looking at his phone and falling into another fit of laughter, “Just my sexy Santa lingerie, u? ;)”

Cas sees Jody’s house coming up and texts back, “My blue tie.”


	16. Chapter 16

Christmas is not exactly like the movies and books and endless television commercials have promised. At least, none of them show the day starting in a motel. The snow is right, though. That’s the important thing: something about the snow makes everything look like it’s supposed to be on a Christmas card or from one of the endless Christmas movies they’ve made him watch, Jack thinks, as he and Mary trudge through the snow back to Jody’s.

The sky is dull grey and a few more flakes start to fall. He stops to watch them, grinning as they land on his face.

He’s been good this year. Somehow he brought back Castiel, and after that, he deliberately found Mary, fought off Michael, saved her from the grey world, and fought alongside the Winchesters again and again, and earned them this week off they’re all so happy to take. He’s learned to save people and to help them. But he had never known until yesterday there was a real, solid way to measure your goodness. To get it _confirmed_ by some impartial judge.

Jody’s house is lit up and beautiful, and fresh flurries of snow are falling, turning it into a perfect picture.

Donna lets them in and says Jody’s on her way back; the girls are all in the front room with a huge collection of gift baskets and presents, everything ranging from shotgun shells to home spa sets.

Jack isn’t sure what part he should have in this, so he slips away to the kitchen to put the kettle on. It seems something they all automatically do as a gesture.

The dishes from last night have been put away so he carefully picks out the exact mug he had before, to be sure he’s not doing anything wrong. His mug has two adorable cartoon cacti growing out of the same pot, and the phrase “ _What a prick!_ ” because one cactus is poking the other with its spines. He knows if they grew together like that in nature they most likely would seal together in mutual cooperation where they were connected, but –

Actually, it’s quite possible there’s a naughty double entendre in the text, and as Castiel says, sometimes there is no rational explanation for the things people do.

He’s still staring at the mug and all the others in Jody’s collection, putting an awful lot of two and twos together, when Donna comes into the kitchen, and jumps when she sees him.

“Oh! You’re making tea. Great – I’ll have mine with one sugar. Jody’ll be back soon and then we can start the party!” She nudges him playfully on the shoulder, and breezes through the kitchen to start getting out the things to make tea and coffee, while Jack just tips his head to watch her. She has so much energy, and a sort of optimism where she keeps offering him candy from various bowls and telling him how polite he is when he parrots back the things he’s supposed to say. She has the sort of energy he imagines Santa Claus would have, although she looks nothing like the depictions of him.

Jack takes his mug and goes to sit in the front room, where the party is set to take place, so he can absorb every moment of it.

He sees Mary, sitting alone on the sofa, awkwardly wave across the room like she’s not sure what’s going on, and turns to see Kaia ducking behind Claire. He’s going to ask Mary what she was doing when the sound of the truck pulling into the drive distracts everyone; Jody comes in to a loud chorused “Merry Christmas!” and Sam, Castiel and Dean shuffle in from behind her to join Mary and Jack sitting to the side to watch the girls handing over goodies to Jody and Donna, who somehow utterly missed the scheming that meant that a large portion of it was for her as well.

“How was it?” Mary asks Sam in a low voice.

He shrugs. “Weird, but not completely depressing. You were okay here?”

“I think it would have been weird to go since I know the alternate universe Bobby better and as far as I know he’s still kicking.” She glances around at Jack, who immediately gives her a thumbs up. It reassures her, though in truth Jack hasn’t dared peek into another dimension since the telling off that Death gave him, because he doesn’t want to let her down. Maybe he’ll ask Kaia later.

It’s slow going at first. Dean and Castiel are both on their phones, Dean leaning on the wall by the kitchen, Castiel sitting on the sofa. Sam had promised he’d look after Jack in a social situation, but after Jody, Donna and the girls are done yelling delightedly at each other about the presents they’re exchanging, Sam latches onto Jody and disappears into the kitchen.

Kaia comes over instead, clutching coffee close in a mug that says “ _I’ll sleep when I’m dead_ ,” and eyes Jack up. It sounds practiced when she speaks: “It’s beyond freaky you and Mary are here, but I just want you to know it’s cool and I’m happy you’re here. Still can’t believe you survived whatever the hell happened to us.”

He grins at her. “I did. Thank you. You helped me get to Mary, and I saved her!”

“Well, good for you.” She bites her lip. “Actually, I have got better at dreamwalking, too. I don’t go to the Bad Place every time any more. I suppose I have you to thank for opening my eyes. So. Um. Thanks also. I didn’t get you a Christmas present because I don’t do this dumb holiday, and also I really did think you were dead until Jody said you were coming, which is probably my bad for not listening to her the rest of the time.”

“That’s okay,” Jack says. “I think most of our participation in this event is entirely a cultural construct rather than a religious obligation. I read about Christmas, but everything has been about food and Santa since we started celebrating.”

“Yeah, and Santa –” She stops and gives Jack a really strange look. “Hey, you don’t…”

“Santa gave me presents this year,” Jack says happily. “I understand your confusion; I suppose it is based on age and not on maturity.”

“Yeah, you’re real mature. Well, I gotta…” She gestures vaguely, and a moment later she’s back sitting on the sofa with Claire, who waves at Jack but not in a way like he should come over and join them.

Alex comes in with an armful of flat boxes. “Here’s all the board games from the cabin… Good thing we picked them up last week. Who wants to play Scrabble?”

Mary grabs Dean by the arm and hauls him towards the table Alex is depositing the boxes on.

“Oh, you two would be a _trip_ to play Monopoly with,” Claire says, gesturing between Jack and Castiel.

The games take up a couple of hours of the day, with Patience joining them, and Kaia sitting by Claire, happy just to watch. Castiel starts out earnestly listening to the rules and Jack thinks he’s going to help but he starts texting again almost every time the others are making their moves and has to ask apologetic questions about what happened while he was distracted. Kaia keeps leaning over to help Jack instead, as much as Claire complains that they’re taking over everything together. He has enough luck with the dice rolls that he still manages to come second to Claire’s rampage across the board, and it’s some of the most fun he’s ever had.

They finish with what Claire says is record time and that it can take months sometimes, which Jack doubts. Donna and Mary are still being really loud over the Scrabble board while Dean also sits out and texts, and it sounds like they’re on their third game, when Sam comes over and announces it’s time to move to the table to eat. The mood in the room becomes a single-minded focus on the huge meal that Jody’s cooked, and though Jack rarely feels starving hungry any more, the raw anticipation in the room has made his stomach feel sympathetically empty.

He ends up crammed between Mary and Patience; Mary has become best friends with Donna it seems, and Jack is happy to listen to them talking spiritedly about disastrous hunting trips their fathers took them on as children, although it seems they had been hunting very different things. Patience is talking something about school with Alex, and their baffling struggle to learn new information and dislike of some subjects, and so Jack tunes it out and listens to Jody wringing compliments about the food out of Dean, Claire demanding stories from Sam about things she’s heard he’s fought – _is_ it true he’s killed two Hellhounds in two separate occasions? He gets weird about answering because Jody is smirking at him from across the table. Mary wades in on his behalf and Jack catches Kaia muttering to Claire that the drink is starting to show.

Castiel keeps texting, and now they’re at the table together, Jack starts to see a back and forth between him and Dean, who lets a minute or two elapse and a lull in conversation to come so he can check; Castiel is less subtle, and also only relying on Dean pulling him into the conversation with a line here or there, asking Castiel to confirm his stories or deny Sam’s ever happened.

Patience is the only one who notices that Castiel is not particularly interested in or good at starting small talk, aside from Jack, and she occasionally tries to start a polite and very nervous conversation about what being an angel is like, which leaves Castiel floundering and confused, and answering all sorts of things which are nothing like the truthful experiences he’s shared. No one really notices that Jack is just watching, but he feels he has very little experience to contribute, and he’s enjoying that everyone else is happy, that his family and their friends – people they consider another branch of their family, perhaps – are so happy. That no one is drinking because they’re miserable, it’s just a part of the copious consumption of the season.

By the time they’re recovering from a terrifyingly dense Christmas cake that Donna provided, home-cooked and with an ominous comment that someone gave it to her without further clarification, everyone is either groaning in a ‘food coma’ as Claire describes it, or getting worse for the wear with drink. They’ve pulled all their Christmas crackers and handed all the jokes to Castiel to read out loud, and there’s a sort of blissfully happy feeling around the table, so clear it’s almost visible to Jack. He’s never felt an energy like it, and it’s far more intoxicating than the drink to be exposed to this much happiness all at once.

“Is anyone up for another round of Scrabble?” Mary asks innocently.

“ _No!_ ” Dean says, sounding panicked.

“I will,” Jack volunteers at once, so that Mary isn’t left hanging.

“Santa brought you so much pep this year!” Donna laughs.

Claire laughs. “Glad he never tried that on me… if he ex – ow!” She turns to glare at Kaia, rubbing her arm, and Kaia leans in to say something in her ear, changes her mind, and takes her by the elbow and pulls her from the room.

They don’t return, and Jack forgets about them as Mary sets out the game board, a determined look in her eyes, and Dean thumps him on the shoulder as he passes, carrying a stack of dishes in the other hand. “Give her hell from me, kid.”

 


	17. Chapter 17

Dean’s had way too much to drink, and he’s somehow misplaced his brother. Theoretically they were about to head off – the girls have all disappeared upstairs, and Donna, who would be crashing on the couch anyway, is splayed across it and snoring, Christmas cracker hat still lopsided on her head. But Dean’s wandered around the whole house looking for Sam to tell him they should leave, and he’s not there, and then he thought he should find Jody to tell her they were leaving himself and ask her if she saw Sam, but it seems he's misplaced her too.

Which is a shame if they can’t find her, because he was going to do his darndest to make Sam stay this time.

“I think wine makes you unusually dense,” Cas says, next to him. Dean has no idea when that happened.

“I’ve been here the whole time, while you complain about not being able to find Jody or Sam,” Cas says.

“Wait, oh. What?”

“Mary and Jack already left. We’ll drop by to thank them for the party in the morning,” Cas says. “I think you need the walk.”

A warm arm goes around his waist, and then they’re trudging along in the snow, and like feeling coming back to his limbs after they’ve been sat on, Dean’s brain sluggishly comes out of the bottle and a half of wine feeling.

“Oooh Sam and Jody are –”

“Shh, it’s after midnight and this is a residential area,” Cas tells him. “You’re unusually loud when you’re drunk on wine.”

“Mm, I never drink wine,” Dean says. “It makes me feel fluffy inside. I like it. It’s a fun drunk. You should get wine drunk with me some time.”

“My alcohol tolerance is still pointlessly high for such things. It would be a waste.”

“That’s a shame, I’ve always wanted to get you drunk for fun.”

“We can have fun without me getting drunk.”

They walk a while further, before Dean says, “Hey, does this mean I have a motel room all to myself tonight?”

Cas is smiling at him, kind of fondly.

“What?” Dean asks.

“You’re happy,” Cas says.

“I’d be happier if you answered that question.”

“You know the answer to it.”

Dean walks on a minute, his brain making sluggish loops. “No, I don’t got it,” he finally says.

Cas takes his hand and pulls him close, steps into his space, and pulls him into a kiss.

It only lasts a brief moment before Cas steps away again, letting his hands fall from Dean’s shoulders, and he looks worried. “I’m sorry, you’re so much drunker than I am – I should never…”

“Dude. I started sending you suggestive comments when I was mostly kinda sober this morning an’ we’ve been escalating it all night, it’s not like you grabbed me outta the blue.”

“Oh. Are you sure?”

Dean grabs him for another kiss, this one messy and uncoordinated, the wine making him desperate, and a decade of uncertainty and loss when it came to Cas making him cling on, fearing Cas will disappear if he loosens his grip on his lapels.

Finally Cas severs them, far more gently than before. “Let’s get back to your motel room.”

“Okay, yeah. We should do that.”

Cas puts his arm back around Dean’s waist, and pulls him closer, and they walk the rest of the way back to the motel like that.

Locked in and given an unexpected Christmas night together, Dean pulls Cas to the bed, determined to show him just how much it means to be there with him.


	18. Chapter 18

Lie-ins aren’t really a part of the job, and haven’t really been a part of Mary’s _life_. She remembers times she was just left to sleep as dramatic moments she can count on a single hand, and even in the Bunker she habitually gets up early just because she can’t bear to lie in bed.

She’s actually starting to think that her entire family have forgotten she exists, when she finally checks her phone and sees it’s nine thirty and she has no messages, not even asking her about breakfast.

After a long hot shower she goes outside, thinking she will go to the diner, or just make the walk back to Jody’s, since they’ll have to pop by one way or another and Donna threatened to make them all an enormous breakfast before they hit the road.

Jack’s outside, helping dig out the parking lot from what looks like another two feet of snow, cheerfully talking to the motel manager and digging just this side of too easily to be believed.

Mary wanders over, picking her way through the untouched snow carefully.

“Morning. Where is everyone?”

“I think they’re still sleeping. Sam is probably still at Jody’s.”

Mary does the math very quickly that there’s only one ‘everyone’ left and bites her lips for a moment as she tries to work it out. Jack just leans on the big snow shovel and smiles at her, with zero expectation. “What about Castiel?” she finally asks, looking around the parking lot again in case she’s missed him doing something… something Cas-like off in the corner.

“I think he’s still… sleeping.”

Mary raises her eyebrows. “I didn’t know he slept.”

“He doesn’t,” Jack says, and his voice is starting to sound a bit strained, his cheerfulness disappearing into confused stress.

“I don’t understand,” Mary says.

“He’s in bed. In Dean’s room,” Jack says.

“Why? Is he okay?”

Jack looks completely mortified as he says, “It’s like Jody’s mugs.”

 _Oh_.

Mary looks around at the closed door, then back to Jack, who is digging very intensely.

“Okay,” she says to no one in particular. “O-okay.”

She’s not entirely sure how long she stands there watching Jack pile snow onto the verge, but she knows she’s been processing a while when Jody’s truck crawls into the parking lot. Sam is there, and Claire and Alex hop out too.

“Heya,” Jody calls. “I thought we’d just come say goodbye here, so you can make a start. It’s going to be a pain in this snow.”

“Tell me about it,” Mary says. “I think I’m going to be driving.”

Sam looks thoroughly hungover, but happy. He’s wearing a too-small Sioux Falls sheriff department t-shirt, and Jody’s swimming in Sam’s festive red and green plaid. At least, Mary thinks, that means she won’t see the eye-searing shirt around as often. “Yeah, fair enough,” he says, and shuffles off to go to the room. Jack rushes to intercept.

“Wait, Sam, you can’t go in there…”

Mary was about to try and small talk Jody through the next awkward few minutes of re-establishing contact that her friend was now sleeping with her son – who was, of course, technically half a dozen years older than Mary anyway. She ends up open-mouthed watching to see what Jack’s play is about to be.

“What?” Sam asks, considerably slower than usual.

“You haaave to help me!” Jack says, settling on an excuse halfway through the sentence. Claire and Alex have joined the onlookers, Claire looking at Mary like she might explain it, then changing her mind about asking in favour of just watching whatever was making her stare.

Sam looks around the parking lot, oblivious to the spectacle he’s in. “I’m going to puke if I help you dig, sorry. Too much wine yesterday.”

“I heard you can write a letter to Santa, so I wanted to thank him for my presents yesterday!”

“What? The Post Office just answers some of them to be cute. Santa doesn’t actually –”

“Nooo—argh!” Claire groans, too late off the mark, as Mary jumps forward to stand behind Jack, too late to signal to Sam he needs to back out, and Sam too bleary to notice anyway.

“He doesn’t what?” Jack asks, narrowing his eyes.

“Uhh… Exist?” Sam asks, utterly confused and out of the loop on the entire Jack and Santa drama.

Jack looks around at Mary, mouth open, looking wounded.

The snow around them disappears with a rustle that shakes all the trees – the ground is suddenly empty and damp as far as Mary can see.

While the air fills with alarmed birds, Jack asks, “Is it true?”

“Yeah,” Mary admits with a sigh.

“Why?” Jack asks.

“It’s just a thing you tell kids to make them excited about Christmas, and make them behave,” Mary says. “Or to make them feel like they’re good if they’ve been having a rough year.”

Sam’s slowly catching up with what’s going on and shuffles apologetically, looking horribly embarrassed. “I’m sorry, I didn’t know you even thought –”

“I told him,” Mary says. “It just seemed…” She stops trying to explain to Sam and looks back to Jack. “You’ve done so much for us this year and it seemed like you needed to hear it from someone who wasn’t us.”

“Oh, we think you’re awesome,” Claire chips in. “Kaia does too. She won’t admit it, but she does.”

“Thank you,” Jack says, looking uncertain still.

“Honestly,” Jody says, “Only you get to decide how you feel about what you’ve done, but your heart is clearly in the right place.”

Jack nods, clutching the now useless shovel until Mary gives up and just hugs him again. “Sorry,” she says.

“It’s okay,” Jack says. “I’m okay. It was just a silly thing.”

“You’re being less dramatic than when Dean found out, at least. He was four and walked in on his father eating the cookies we’d left, out, and… well…”

“You lied to Sam and Dean too?”

“Hey, leave me out of this, Dean told me when I was _eight_ and I handled it fine.”

Mary thinks that’s probably untrue and she should probably ask Dean later.

Or right now, because finally he comes out of the motel room, dressed and grinning and carrying bags to the car.

“Hey, where’d all the snow go?” he asks.

“Jack killed Christmas,” Sam grumbles, and clearly fed up of being in the spotlight, sidles off towards their room at last. Mary sees him jump as Castiel comes out of the room first, and Sam looks over his shoulder at Castiel until he’s into the room and closed the door.

Dean deposits his bags in the back of the car, then comes over to hug Jody and the girls goodbye. Claire squirms away, then dives back into the truck for a second, and says, “Here, we decided since we didn’t really any of us get you a Christmas present, you can have this.” She hands him the “ _DICK_ ” mug he’d got to attached to the day before.

“Wow. Thanks,” he says, sounding choked up like he actually means it.

Alex hands Mary a few other mugs from the back, with rather less emotional intensity. “We got so many new ones this year we kinda have to make the space in the cupboard.”

“Fair enough. We haven’t ruined the Bunker’s aesthetic enough yet, so I’m sure these mugs will help. Castiel has smashed about five mugs and we’re running low.”

Jody pulls out her phone to check a text alert. “Huh, great timing. Patience says she’s had a vision of some messy death. We should head back.”

“You want a hand?” Dean asks.

Jody laughs at him. “Nooo, we got this, don’t you worry.”

Claire pauses one foot in the truck, “You call us if you need any help though, any time.” She winks and slams the door behind her.

“Seriously, they save your lives one time and they’re insufferable for life,” Dean complains, grabbing Cas’s sleeve and pulling him towards the car. “C’mon, at least the roads are going to be clear.”

The ride back ends up with Mary cramped in the back between Sam and Jack. Cas and Dean keep grinning at each other in the front seat, listening to loud music, and somehow Cas gets shotgun again even after a rest stop.

About fifteen miles from home, Jack says quietly. “I do depend on you all to tell me about how the world works. I am disappointed that Santa isn’t real, but I understand why you did it. And it worked, so thank you.”

Mary smiles at Jack.

“No problem?” Sam says, looking more relieved than anything that he’s been let off the hook.

“No problem,” Jack agrees.

“If you asked me a couple of years ago – and by that I mean in 1983 – what a perfect Christmas would be like, I would _not_ have managed to get a single detail of it right, except that I’d have said ‘my boys’ would be there,” Mary says.

“What was that mom?” Dean yells over the music that’s making the front seat in particular a no-conversation zone.

“I said eyes on the road or I’m driving!” she yells back.

Dean laughs and turns back to face the road – then glances at Cas like his eyes are magnetically drawn.

Mary sighs.

Definitely not what she was expecting, but family nonetheless.


End file.
